Arkansas Times

State strikes deal to remove hog farm from Buffalo River watershed

By

Max Brantley

On June 13, 2019

Gov. Asa Hutchinson used an appearance before the Arkansas Municipal League today to announce that a deal had been struck to remove the C and H factory hog feeding operation from the Buffalo River watershed.

The farmers will get $6.2 million, mostly public money but also from the Nature Conservancy, to take their hog waste away.

The farm has been an enormous controversy since it was approved with little notice during the Beebe administration. The owners, with significant support from the Arkansas Farm Bureau, have resisted efforts to shut it down. Lawsuits and regulatory hearings have dragged on as environmentalists argued that the porous limestone geology beneath the concentrated animal feeding operation allowed hog waste to seep into the water table and that land application of waste had also contributed to runoff that was polluting a nearby stream that feeds into the Buffalo National River, a prime tourist attraction. Coincidentally or not, the river has been marred recently by heavy algae growth.

The deal will include a payment, including state money, to the farm operators, who were under contract to supply pork to one of the world’s largest protein producers, JBSBrazil.  The state will get a conservation easement that ends a hog feeding operation on the farm at Mount Judea in Newton County.

The operators, while suing to get a permit for continued operation, had also been investigating other potential sites. One in Franklin County was recently imperiled by the Arkansas River flooding, but a spokesman for Arkansas Pork Producers told me then that an effort to get a permit for a hog farm there had been withdrawn. The agreement today makes no mention of future plans by the hog farmers.

In the recent legislative session, the Farm Bureau narrowly failed in a push to remove hog farm regulation from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and move it to an agency where local farmers have strong influence and without less scientific expertise. The governor had urged a delay in that legislation after it passed the Senate. It was pulled down after it ran into House opposition.

Opponents had developed a scathing attack on the hog triangle created by the farm: The farm sends dollars to Brazil (JBS); JBS sends pork chops to China, the farm sends hog manure to the Buffalo River.

It’s a big win for the governor.